Some thoughts on Ukraine

[Editor’s note: The author of this column, Dr. Richard Sternberg, is a retired Bassett Hospital orthopedic surgeon. While he has been sharing his professional perspective during the COVID-19 pandemic, this week, he offers a sobering view on Ukraine and its plight. Also a village trustee, he lives in Cooperstown.]

For almost two years I have been writing a column on COVID-19. There is still a lot that can be written about it; I’ve read or reviewed almost 50 articles in the past week alone. Most are technical but some discuss the various opinions about changes on restrictions and even whether to reclassify COVID from a pandemic to endemic.

Try as I might, right now I can’t focus on that.

There is a little-known journal called the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, around for about 75 years. On its cover each month there is a clock, the hands of which set to the perceived risk of nuclear war. The clock is now set to 100 seconds.

Throughout its entire history — including the worst periods of the cold war and threats between the Soviet Union and the U.S. in the fifties and sixties when I was a child — it has never been closer to midnight. This is how mad our world has become. Dr. Strangelove has nothing on this current lunacy.

At least when we were dealing with the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union there were checks and balances on both sides that could prevent the launching of nuclear war accidently or because of one unhinged individual.

The recent invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin in the name of “protecting a Russian minority in Ukraine” and “due to Ukrainian provocations” sounds like Hitler’s “reason” for launching the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. That is terrifying to me.

Putin has effectively stated that he wants to reconstitute the Soviet Union, and so far the rest of the world has been appeasing him. The world sat back while he invaded Crimea and supported what essentially have been puppet governments in Belarus and the separatists in eastern Ukraine, and exerted influence over other former Soviet republics.

Didn’t we learn anything from the Munich Agreement of 1938? The more you appease dictators the more they are going to try to grab and the longer they have to prepare to do so.

The west must cut Putin off from the rest of the world’s economic system immediately and completely, even if it causes short term financial pain to us. Sure, it will hurt our pocketbooks, even more so than that caused to date, but it may be the last opportunity to stop this madness before we get into a hot war with a megalomaniacal madman who might be willing to see everything and everybody around him burn rather than having to admit defeat. Sound familiar?

Despite a despotic police state arresting and jailing its own people, citizens in Russia are demonstrating for peace. The Russian stock market has been closed and when it reopens will be blocked from foreigners selling their investments effectively stealing them, the government reserve rate has jumped from 10 to 20 percent, and the ruble has never been worth less against western currencies.

We must show continued support, not just in the short term but over the long haul for Ukraine and the other stressed nations of the Earth in standing up to totalitarianism. We must help to rebuild the country. Possibly we can pay for it from Russian assets won in court (the law suits have already been filed) and from government seizure. Remember, acquiescing to fear of what Putin does next will not prevent it, it will only delay it a little.

I am hopeful the Russian people and its military will realize what needs to be done to start to fix the problem and do so.